Alien (1979)

The title of this movie is pretty self explanatory -- it’s about an alien. While passing a small, unknown planet, on their way back to earth, the blue collar crew of the space vessel Nostromo pick up what they thought to be a distress signal. A few crew members are sent to investigate only to find that the signal they intercepted was not a distress signal but a warning. The crew manages to escape the planet, but only to find an alien has snuck on board.

The dramatic irony in this film is in most cases, quite subtle, and is not used for a comedic effect. Instead, dramatic irony is used to add suspense to tragic scenes. One example of dramatic irony can be found just after Kane wakes up--while the crew is having one last meal together before they enter hypersleep. During this meal, the crew act optimistic and are happy that everyone is alive and well. However, the audience knows that this film is about an alien and is about to take a turn for the worse. During the meal, Kane starts to feel weak and begins to violently choke. The irony reaches its climax when the alien--which the whole crew thought was dead--kills Kane by bursting out of his stomach and running away.

Army of Darkness

Army of Darkness finds most of its comedy in Bruce Campbell's one liners. The story follows his character, Ash, who has been sent back from the present along with his car, his chainsaw, and his shotgun. Upon arrival in 1300 AD, his primary concern is getting himself back to the present. There are a few points of dramatic irony in the film. One point comes when Ash is found in 1300 AD and is believed to be on of King Henry the Red's men, while we know that he is from the future.

I would give this film four out of five stars. I thought it was funny, but at times there was a lot of cliche. For instance when Ash got to the book, he forgot the words that he had to say before picking it up. I would recommend this film to another person.

Man + Time Travel To The Past = Black Knight

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEzcyX-lKy0

"Black Knight" is a moderately funny movie, about a man, Jamal, who falls into a lake, and travels back to the middle ages. At first, he thinks he just traveled downstream and found his way to a rival amusement park with a renaissance theme. He wanders around thinking everyone is too serious about their character. When he is stopped at the gates he tries to convince the guards to let him in, but due to his manner of speaking, the guards cannot fully understand him. When Jamal mentions the amusement park he works at on Normandy street, the guards think he is a messenger from Normandy. They take Jamal to see the king, who he thinks is the amusement park's boss. After he delivers a fake message to the king, he is introduced to a beautiful woman who leads him to his bedroom. The woman notices Jamal is wearing a symbolic necklace that only people of the resistance wears. She assumes Jamal is here to kill the king, so she reveals that she is also part of the resistance. Confused, Jamal finds out that he really is back in time and must find a way to get back home. If he does not return home by the time the real messenger arrives the evil king will execute him. But since he falls in love with the rebel woman he must decide between helping the resistance, or leaving them behind and returning home.
 If I had to give it a rating, I would say 3/5. It is filled with "clueless person" type of humor, which I love, but sometimes over done in this movie. Most of the dramatic irony that takes place in this movie is when he first travels back in time. The audience knows he is in the medieval ages, but the character on screen still thinks he is in the present. He walks around talking in an "odd" manner and shows zero respect towards the king, who could very easily execute him. This makes the start of the film pretty funny, but after a while it focuses more on the story and less on the jokes. Still I would recommend this movie if you have not seen it yet.

Being John Malkovich

This movie is about a puppeteer who realizes there is no hope left in this career and then looks for a job in the newspaper. He then finds a job for a company that is on the 7 1/2 floor of a building as a filer. One day he drops a file behind a filing cabinet and then finds a secret passage way. He travels inside of it only to find he is inside the mind of famous actor John Malkovich. Craig, the main character, is too excited about this discovery and tells his partner at work who he fell in love with, Maxine, about this portal.  

Craig goes on to tell his wife, Maxine, about this secret portal. She then wishes to experience this adventure and travels inside of John Malkovich while he's on a date with Maxine. Lotte, Craig's wife, falls in love with Maxine while she is inside John Malkovich's mind. Lotte and Craig invite Maxine over for dinner and they both discover that Maxine is also in love with Lotte. Craig is upset by this. Lotte makes plans to be inside John Malkovich when he is on a date with Maxine so they can have sex. Craig finds out and gets angry so he puts his wife in a cage.

John Malkovich feels off and discovers that Maxine and Craig are running a business for trips inside his head. He freaks out and goes inside his own brain. Meanwhile, Craig is going inside John Malkovich in order to have sex with Maxine. Maxine then finds out from Lotte that it has been Craig inside John every time they had sex. Maxine gives up on Lotte because she sees potential in Craig as John Malkovich's mind. 

Lotte goes to this man Dr. Lester's house who is also obsessed with being John Malkovich. She then finds out the real story about the mind portal. John Malkovich drops his acting career because Craig has manipulated his mind into believing that that is what he wants. 

Craig via John and Maxine then go on to live a happy life together. However, once he becomes famous and he reaches his 44th birthday.. Maxine becomes a different person.. 

*A moment of dramatic irony is the scene where Maxine is having dinner at Craig and Lotte's home. Craig and Lotte have no idea that the other is in love with Maxine and they both go in to kiss Maxine. Maxine then tells Lotte that she loves her too. 

The Vicious Kind

The Vicious Kind 

For homework, I watched The Vicious Kind. In short, the movie opens with two brothers, Caleb (older) and Peter (younger), eating in a diner after just picking Peter up for Thanksgiving break from college. Caleb drills Peter about his new girlfriend that he met at a frat house. Caleb, pessimistic from the start of the movie, accuses her of being a whore after Peter talks positively about her. The brothers then drive to Peter's girlfriend Emma's house to pick her up for Thanksgiving. Caleb pulls into the driveway of his father's house to drop the couple off, but explains that he will not be joining them for Thanksgiving, considering the ongoing tensions between him and his father. While in town, Emma repeatedly coincidentally bumps into Caleb in various places. Caleb warns Emma not to break his brother's heart, and almost hurts her while expressing this. Then when he runs into Emma again, he expresses how vibrant she makes him feel and how he likes her much. At first, Emma responds adversely to Caleb's persistent pressures, but finally she succumbs to his desire and becomes infatuated with him. After they sleep together, Caleb shows his disinterest in Emma and breaks her heart. Emma is left with Peter who is unaware of the situation. The movie ends with Peter telling Emma that he loves her and the relationship between Caleb and his father beginning to mend. 

The dramatic irony began with the constant nightly visits by Caleb to his father's house, where Emma and Peter were staying. Emma would sneak outside to smoke at night, because she had not told Peter, who does not like the smell or find attractiveness in it, her addiction. Caleb would be waiting for her, just to talk and be with her. After repeatedly telling him to leave and Caleb continuing to present himself, Emma gave into her desires and brought him to her bedroom. The situation remained morally wrong, but the two acted within the moment. Caleb left after having sex with Emma and told her it would not work out between them. Emma, heartbroken, retreated to Peter without giving him an inkling as to what happened between her and Caleb. 

the nines

This movie is about Ryan Reynolds living three lives in what is set up as different universes. He does not know of his other parts until his protector has to inform him of his true destiny

This movie has little to do with time travel but rather the travel between universes. The dramatic irony comes when we know Reynolds Characters true potential and he cannot seem to find himself. Also ironic because in this movie he created the world that perplexes him so much. This film ties in beautifully with our book because Ryan thought he was not crazy and in the end he was right. Who knows, Billy might be too.

Black Knight: The Epic Time Travel

Black Knight is a comedy where Jamal (Martin Lawrence) working as a low-level employee goes back in time to a whole new lifestyle. As the trailer illustrates, there is a lot of comedy including some dark humor in this movie. There is plenty of dramatic irony where Jamal has no clue of what is about happen but the audience watching know exactly what is up. Made under the main theme of time travelling, Jamal ends up helping the benevolent queen take back her kingdom from the evil king. The movie ties together everything where he ends back where he started and sees the woman of his dreams.

Source Code: A Dramatic Conventional Approach to Time Traveling

Initially, the movie attempted to offer a different explanation to time traveling. In fact, at first it denied the nature that the protagonist was time traveling. Instead, it asserted that he was programmed. As the plot unfolds, this fictitious space-time turned out to be a parallel universe. In light of this statement, this film questions the philosophical basis of time traveling and offered the conventional explanation. However, instead of emphasizing the negative side of intrinsic human nature (like Slaughterhouse Five and The Butterfly Effect, Source Code highlighted the "good" part of it. Above all, regardless of the "carrier", the central idea of these time-traveling fictions is still the discussion of human nature.

Saw the perfect movie on time while babysitting. So we all know the Christmas Carol, the idea of time comes into play when he is visited by the ghost of past, present, and future. He is jumping from one decade to another just like Vonnegut does in his novel Slaughterhouse Five. The guy Scrooge starts of a mean and miserable man. After these ghosts he wakes up and starts being friendly to everyone he sees, and realizes that he needs to start living his life.

The Big Lebowski

Summary: This movie is about a classic mix-up between a rich, powerful man and a lazy bum. Gangsters ambush "the dude" Lebowski at his house and demand the money they are owed. The dude denies any debt, and one of the gangsters urinates on his rug -- the crappy old rug which he insists "really ties the room together." The gangsters soon realize that they have the wrong Lebowski, and leave him. The dude then decides to seek revenge for his ruined rug. The bottom line: this movie is really funny.

Scene:    When Smokey, a rival bowler, fowls on a shot, Walter orders him to mark his shot as a zero. Smokey, who bowls an 8, insists that he did not touch the line. Walter immediately becomes enraged and demands that "this isn't vietnam, we have rules here." Smokey says again that he did not touch the line. Walter pulls a gun and asks, if he is the only one who cares at all about the rules. He points the gun at Smokey, and screams, "do you think I'm fuckin' around here? Mark it zero!" Smokey, afraid for his life, marks his frame as zero. Walter immediately puts away the gun. In a calm, collected voice, he states, "It's a league game, Smokey."

Snatch

Snatch is a film directed by Guy Ritchie, set in London England. It involves many different stories lines that are all, in some way connect to each other. The film contains many flashbacks as it begins with an interview that is actually the end of the movie. The story ties in many East End gangsters, American diamond dealers and pikes, which is a colloquial term used in the film to describe travellers.  The film uses a lot of crude but clever humour that can be dark in many cases. This is a great example of dark, English comedy. Dramatic irony is represented very strongly throughout the whole film as the stories are connected. The irony however, is that none of the characters know each other and are oblivious to this, until the end. This is one of my favourite films and an excuse to watch it again couldn't be missed. Perfect.

Butterflies in her eyes and looks to kill: The Butterfly effect

(the title is a reference to the song Butterfly by Crazy Town)


Trailer (not the official):


Hesitant to watch this dark movie, I was resilient to call it a dark comedy. Not really knowing anything about the movie going into it, I found myself doubting the comedic aspect throughout. Looking back however, I can see the elements of dark comedy, or at the very least, aspects of dark irony. All throughout the movie Ashton Kutcher's character Evan Treborn relives moments he has blacked out. The audience watching the movie experiences tragic events that happened in Evan's life, which are the moments he goes back to. His first moments reliving the past are merely observant, but eventually he learns to changes his actions in the past, altering the future. After he returns back to the present, life has changed based off of what he did differently. After so many jumps back, Evan has completely ruined his life, and those around him. He comes to the ultimate conclusion on how to fix everything, ending the movie with a game changer, throwing the audience completely off guard.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ALTERNATE ENDINGS:

NOTE: THIS MAY BE A SPOILER TO THOSE WHO HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE

Dark Comedy... Minus Any of the Comedy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8_dgqfPXFg

The movie that I watched was the Butterfly Effect. More or less, it was about a young boy who had randomly-occurring blackouts during the extent of his youth, each day of which he writes about in a journal. Then, as a chance occurrence, he reads one of the entries and realizes that he can not only go back and "complete" these memories, but he can also actually change the course of events through his own conscious intervention.

This movie was a bit on the depressing side. That's actually an understatement. This was the type of movie in which the character creates an almost endless loop of dramatic irony because while they attempt to do things (in this case, change the past) for benevolent purpose, they create a different set of cataclysmic circumstances that the audience is more than privy to. Despite the lack of any type of actual humor within the content, the movie was certainly a good one. And, unlike many other movies involving the idea of time travel, it tied up the loose ends in a concise fashion.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

When choosing a movie, I thought it was going to be a dark comedy but I soon found out it has a sci-fi twist to it. A free spirited woman, Clementine, and an awkward man, Joel, fall in love but after a bad fall out, they choose to erase each other from their memories with a new form of technology. The procedure takes an abnormal course when Joel decides he doesn't want to forget about Clementine. This movie takes you back in time through a course of events that made the couple fall in love in the first place. 

Dramatic Irony:
While the deteriorating romance of the main characters occurs, another story happens on the side. A woman who works at the front desk of the memory removal company is in love with the man who discovered the memory removal procedure. When she reveals her love to him with a passionate kiss, the man's wife happens to be watching. In disgust, the wife tells the young woman from the front desk that she already had her husband to begin with. At this point, the viewer watching the movie realizes that the procedure was done on the young lady to forget about her love for her boss. This makes the scene very dramatic because the woman is terribly confused which leads to extreme actions later on. 

Flying Through Time: The Butterfly Effect

When starting The Butterfly Effect, one can automatically assume that the plot is rather dark, but definitely not comedic. The main character, Evan, starts out scrambling through an hospital office while being searched for by the police when suddenly the movie is brought back in time. From that point on, Evan has blackouts that occur when he is suppressing bad memories involving his childhood friends and the love of his life. The movie jumps by years to when Evan's memories resurface and he realizes that he has the ability to change his past in order to end up with a desired female, Kayleigh. The Butterfly Effect concludes with an event that first seems selfish, but better for everyone, followed by a romantic twist in events. The viewer is left in suspense waiting to see which change the main character would make to time, affecting everyone's lives forever. All of the previous incidents seemed a bit obvious as to which changes Evan would make, but as the end of the movie draws closer and closer and the affects on lives become more drastic, the viewer is left puzzled as to which path he will choose. The whole movie was an example of dramatic irony alone with a bit of socratic irony because none of the characters realized, unlike the viewer, that their lives were going to be changed every ten minutes. 

TGIF: Weekend Movie Suggestions and Homework Assignment

Dresden after the fire bombing

The original book cover

1. Read Chapter 5 in Slaughter House Five for MONDAY.
Consider:
a. Suspension of Disbelief -  the possibility that Billy's story is true.
b. Realists -  Barbara's POV that her father Billy is senile and delusional.

2. Watch either a Science Fiction movie (time travel, futuristic, or aliens) or a Dark Comedy.

(DO NOT Watch Slaughter House Five - we may watch it as a class later, but not until after we've finished the book. I haven't decided yet - and it may spoil the book. We will definitely watch Dr Stangelove - so don't watch that film either.)

3. Post to our class blog the following:
a. a trailer or youtube clip for your movie.
b. a brief summary and review of your movie in your own words.
c. a paragraph highlighting and explaining a moment of dramatic irony - a comic or tragic scene where the dramatic irony made the scene either funny or suspenseful.

An excellent definition for dramatic irony from:
A Glossary of Literary Terms  By Meyer Howard Abrams, Geoffrey Galt Harpham

How References and Intertextuality Enhance Meaning in Literature

Reading requires knowledge of references outside the text. Without that shared knowledge with the author of a novel, the reader can't possibly imagine the picture that author is attempting to paint. A reader must research - and thank goodness for Google searches: it's easy to learn in seconds; however, we have become lazy readers in this digital world were we watch countless movies, videos, and youtube clips. We are given a barrage of images, but we lose our imagination as readers. Reading requires curiosity - and a little work as researchers for references and images we don't readily know. 

Here's a couple references that I found interesting that led me to research. As a class, we brought research and knowledge to the text by footnoting and annotating through images and hyperlinks.

1. St. Elmo's fire:

"Ever since Billy had been thrown into shrubbery for the sake of a picture, he had been seeing Saint Elmo's fire, a sort of electronic radiance around the heads of his companions and captors. It was in the treetops and on the rooftrops of Luxembourg, too. It was beautiful."

As readers, how can we share in Billy's visions if we don't know what Saint Elmo's fire is? How can we appreciate the beauty?

Definition: St Elmo’s fire is a plasma created by grounded object in an atmospheric electric field (i.e. Thunderstorms), what you see is actually a plasma created by a discharge of energy on the point. St Elmo’s Fire was most commonly seen on ships in the olden days, which is why it was named for St. Erasmus, the patron saint of sailors. Usually St Elmo’s fire appears in bright blue or violet glow and from pointed structures lightning rods, masts, spires and chimneys, and on aircraft wings.

2. An example of intertextuality: Vonnegut refers to two books he had with him on the plane:

 Theodore Roethke's Words for the Wind, however, the titular poem of the collection does not include the quoted passage in Slaughter-House Five.

Listen to Roethke read a few poems: My Papa's Waltz, Elegy for Jane

Dresden: Before and After the Bombing

In Slaughterhouse-Five, Dresden is mentioned and the bombing that happened in this city. On February 13-15, 1945 in Dresden, Germany there were four bomb raids. This was the second half of WWII and this firestorm destroyed nearly 15 square miles of the city. Upwards to 25,000 casualties were taken in this bombing and Dresden suffered for many years afterwards.

Here are images of Dresden before the bombing:


...and after:

Frank Sinatra's Impact on WWII

Frank Sinatra continuously tried to enlist in the military, but was constantly rejected because of an eardrum injury that occurred at birth. After his second rejection, Sinatra asked if he could "help in the war effort" by working as an entertainer for the USO (United Service Organizations) and also payed the government $40,000 to not be drafted. He was also was claimed to be an anti-American and a Communist because of his constant support of President Franklin Roosevelt. He was hated by many of the soldiers that were involved in WWII because he was making a lot of money and getting women while other men were in battle. Soldiers were most frustrated by the fact that Sinatra was considered to be on the same level as them, helping the war effort "equally". 

POW trains

On pg 392 Billy is captured an put in a prisoner of war train, the trains were used to transport troops from the frontline to the POW camps.

There were many prisoners in WWII Germany treated there prisoners a lot worst the the allies. The pictures below show some of the conditions in WWII. The map below shows all the camps in Germany it was a very extensive to house all the prisoners accumulated over the years of the war.

"Save Our Republic"

One of three stickers on the back of Billy's Cadillac was the bumper sticker "Impeach Earl Warren." As the book said, this was a gift from Billy's father in law, who belonged to the John Birch Society.

The John Birch Society is a very radically right winged political group that formed in 1958, and became popular in the 1960's. They were very anti-communism, and wanted very little political interference. In the 1960's, many chapters of the John Birch Society had formed all over the nation and became heavily involved in protest, including a protest to impeach Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren.

Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren was acting as a Justice when many cases of civil rights, corrupt police officers, and division of church and state. Many jokingly called him the 'Superchief" and protested for his impeachment. He eventually retired in 1969 after a long legacy of ruling over many things that conservatives were annoyed about. The John Birch society considered him a friend of the communist.

Who where the Green Berets?

"Billy's son Robert had a lot of trouble in high school, but then he joined the famous Green Berets."

The Green Berets are the army special forces, and are named for the green berets that they wear. Their origins can be traced back to the civil war and Colonel John Mosby. They went into Vietnam in order to train other soldiers on guerrilla fighting tactics and to fight the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army.

Tralfamadore and the Tralfamadorians

 Tralfamadore is a fictional, "alien" planet, home to the Tralfamadorians. It has appeared in several Kurt Vonnegut novels including Slaughterhouse-Five, Hocus Pocus, and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.

The Tralfamadorians (pictured below) were described in Slaughterhouse-Five by the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim:

"two feet high, and green, and shaped like plumber's friends. Their suction cups were on the ground, and their shafts, which were extremely flexible, usually pointed to the sky. At the top of each shaft was a little hand with a green eye in its palm. The creatures were friendly, and they could see in four dimensions. They pitied Earthlings for being able to see only three. They had many wonderful things to teach Earthlings about time." 

The Execution of Private Slovik
By William Bradford Huie

This is the book that Billy found "under the cushion of his overstuffed chair" (Vonnegut 374). The story, which was later made into a movie, talks about the only American who was sentenced to death after the Civil War for desertion.

Old-Time Luxembourg

p.388 "Billy found the afternoon stingingly exciting. There was so much to see-- dragon's teeth, killing machines, corpses with bare feet that were blue and ivory. So it goes. Bobbing up-and-down, up-and-down, Billy beamed lovingly at a bright lavender farmhouse that had been spattered with machine-gun bullets. Standing in its cock-eyed doorway was a German colonel. With him was an unpainted whore."

Although Billy was captured by the Germans, he seemingly had a positive outlook about the situation. He looked at the passing places in Luxembourg with admiration for their beauty.







Although war doesn't have a positive connotation, Billy finds beauty in unfortunate situations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_occupation_of_Luxembourg_in_World_War_II

In Vonnegut: pg 390 "He said that after the war he was going to have a regimental reunion in his home town, which was Cody, Wyoming."
Wikipedia states: "Cody is a city in Park Country, Wyoming. It is named after William Frederick Cody, primarily known as Buffalo Bill. The population is 9250."
It is very close to Yellowstone Park.

Cody Wyoming was mentioned in the text when the colonel was dying, he said that when the war was over he was going to have a reunion in his home town- Cody.

THE SERENITY PRAYER

Billly Pilgrim had the poem in his office. (385) This poem inspired many members of his Lions' Club. Here is more   from Wikipedia:

The Serenity Prayer is the common name for an originally untitled prayer by twentieth century American theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr.^[1] The prayer has been adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous and other twelve-step programs.

The best-known form is:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

Here is the big and ORIGINAL version

God, give me grace to accept with serenity

the things that cannot be changed,

Courage to change the things

which should be changed,

and the Wisdom to distinguish

the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,

Enjoying one moment at a time,

Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,

Taking, as Jesus did,

This sinful world as it is,

Not as I would have it,

Trusting that You will make all things right,

If I surrender to Your will,

So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,

And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.

Buick Roadmaster 75 Riviera circa 1958

page four twenty four: "He had been rewarded for marrying a girl nobody in his right mind would have married. His father-in-law had given him a new Buick Roadmaster, an all electric home, and had made him manager of his most prosperous office, his Ilium office, where Billy could expect to make at least thirty thousand dollars a year.

Blood Puddings

"The hinged clogs were transforming his feet into blood puddings." (Vonnegut 388)



Blood pudding, or more commonly known as Black pudding, is a cooked dried blood made into sausage. The blood used to make these sausages depend on the country and its culture. Believe it or not, blood pudding is actually served all over the world, even right here in America.

About "Impeach Earl Warren"

On page 383, the author highlighted the Impeach Earl Warren stickers.He was the 14th Chief Justice of the USA. The conservative John Birch Society attempted to impeach Earl Warren since his status in the judiciary system was too high. This impeachment ultimately ended up in a failure.

The Flimsiest of Compasses: unstuck in time

"All of us navigating through time and space with the flimsiest of compasses."

Buddha: The only thing that matters, moment to moment, is how you feel in the moment.  This mad scramble of moments that supposedly all happen at the very same instant, regardless of our illusions about space and time. And at this moment I feel good.

"This was when Billy first came unstuck in time" (Vonnegut 373).

Croesus: A Wealthy Man

"Billy owned a lovely Georgian home in Ilium. He was rich as Croesus, something he had never expected to be, not in a million years." pg. 386

Croesus was the king of Lydia from 560 until his defeat by the Persians in 547 BC. He was known for his wealth and his extravagant gifts preserved at Delphi. With this incredible amount of wealth, Greek and Persian cultures use the name of Croesus as a synonym for a wealthy man. When Vonnegut refers to Billy Pilgrim as "rich as Croesus", he is referencing to how Billy has become a wealthy man. 

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Ref pg. 356

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

German thinker, artist, politician, and writer. Lived 1749-1832. Influenced the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Hermann Hesse, and Thomas Mann. Upon death he left over 10,000 letters, nearly 3000 drawings, and countless other small ideas and discoveries.

Goethe was dead for 113 years before the narrator says he visited Dresden.

Tastee Freeze: A timeless classic

On Page 386, Vonnegut takes the time to talk about the restaurant chain Tastee-Freez when he says "he owned... half of three Tastee-Freeze stands. Tastee-Freeze was a sort of frozen custard" and so on and so forth. This part interested me because of the juxtaposition that Vonnegut creates here as Billy is jumping back and forth within time. That is to say at one point

he's here:


then all of the sudden he's here:


I found it interesting.

(More about the restaurant: http://www.tastee-freez.com/about.php)

MAGIC FINGERS!!!!!!


John Houghtaling invented magic fingers.He had over 20 missions on a B17 bomber in WWII. Mr. Pilgrim references it in his life the night of his daughters wedding(pg. 387). I found this interesting link from Wikipedia!: 
In the 1950s, Houghtaling was again working as a salesman, this time selling vibrating beds in which the vibrating motor and bed were sold as a single unit that was clumsy, expensive and prone to failure.^[1] At a service call for a broken unit, Houghtaling realized that the vibrating motor was the essential component, not the bed, and that a unit could be developed that would attach to any bed, not just the combination vibrating bed units he was selling.^[3] Houghtaling worked in the basement of his Glen Rock, New Jersey, home and tested hundreds of motors before finding one that combined the minimum-needed weight, could be attached to the box springs of an existing bed and would provide the right level of vibration. Once a quarter was inserted into the attached coin meter, the motor would vibrate the bed for 15 minutes.^[1] The coin mechanisms were modeled on similar devices that had been attached to radios and televisions in hotels.^[4]

Power of Memory: Nostalgia

In - Class notes:

KOB's Pinterest for Dark Humor

A dark humor movie recommendation for those of you who love Netflix (if you're going to watch movies this winter, I will have many recommendations).

More movies by screenwriter Charlie Kaufman including Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind.

HWK: 

1. Read Chapter 3
2. In your journal, trace three points - one quote from each chapter - through the first three chapters.
3. Consider drafting a chronological time line in your journal - NOTE the DATES and Major Events.

Sensitive Comedy

My Explanation: Black Comedy is defined by a joke that lightens up an otherwise doleful situation and if gone wrong, could hurt or offend some individuals. They are normally surrounded by the death or misfortune of an individual. This kind of humor normally brings out the cold-hearted side of a person's personality and shows the boundaries of how fat their amusement stretches.

Here are some videos by Key and Peele that I enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijdcL6FrQ6Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_qZggrYHRQ

I find these videos hilarious because of the settings and especially good acting. They make use of unintended mistakes to lead to the misfortune of others.

dark humor zoochosis

m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=SbBJvgEnGvs&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DSbBJvgEnGvs

Essence of Black Humor

    Humor is generally constituted of two factors: personal experiences or the "universal humorous appeal." Black humor is established on making fun of tragic incidents, therefore the ethical righteousness could cause some controversy, especially when shown to certain audience groups. As the nature of dark humor is under great controversy nowadays, admittedly it is hard for it to become valued works of art. Yet, its affiliation to the majority due to its low-requirement entertainment contributed greatly to its popularity. This creates a central paradox: while most people enjoy black humor, they are very reluctant to admit it or display it to the mass public.

The Harsh Reality Side Of It

In short, I've learned that dark humor is, "dark, cynical, pessimistic or just sick humor." 

I found a website with silly quotes that are black humor-ish and here are some I found...

In relating to school: 

Official Project Stages:

1. Uncritical Acceptance
2. Wild Enthusiasm
3. Dejected Disillusionmen
4. Total Confusion
5. Search for the Guilty
6. Punishment of the Innocent
7. Promotion of the Non-participants

Ha Ha..       The most common form of marriage proposal:  "YOU'RE WHAT!?"

The dark, cynical and sick piece of dark humor:

"For three days after death, hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off."

Johnny Carson

In all, I find the most humor in the 'harsh reality' type of dark humor. It's something many can agree on and struggle to laugh about but in the end it is how we move on. 

What's funny anyways?

When Googling "comedy", "humor", and "what's funny?", I found out that they are all synonymously intertwined. Something that makes you laugh deals with humor and you obviously find it funny which makes it comedic. Basically anyone can be a comedian, but the how long a person can keep the jokes flowing proves how great of a comedian one is. Humor deals with the ability to make someone laugh like how something funny does as well, but comedy is work that is intended to please an audience. I learned (with the help of Google) that there are different levels of humor and how they are approached vocally and through movement to audiences of different ages.

I'll admit that my sense of humor is has a weird range. I like jokes that are extremely straight forward and jokes that require thought, but I absolutely hate dumb, obvious jokes where you can guess the punch line or you know that someone's going to slip and fall on a banana peel. I like jokes and skits that are witty.

Humor

Definition of Humor:

Humor is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humour)

Something Funny

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSvN7fw32Rs 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evhru7LPVOU

Humour

Humour
Humour and comedy is very relative. It varies from country to country and person to person. I have noticed this especially with been in America where the sense of humour differs to the UK. People always seem to have a simular sense of humour to there siblings or friends, probably one of the reasons their friends in the first place. Humour seems to be one of the most prominent personality trait that people notice in somebody. Dark humour seems to crop up a lot due to the fact that when something awful happens, some people find the best way to deal with it is to turn the event on its head and try to draw a few laughs from the situation.

This is a video that i have found funny from a young age it is very subjective to a person that comes from Yorkshire, its not dark but it represents the difference in humour across a region.

Dark Humor

Here is a quotation from an article titled "Black Comedy in Kubrick's Films." The author gives a brief definition of black comedy/dark humor and then explains how Kubrick uses dark humor in some of his films. I think we will be watching a Kubrick movie later in this course and this quotation serves as a short introduction to his film style....

"Black comedy, also called dark comedy/humor, is a sub-genre of comedy that presents serious matters in a more laughable way. Movies of this genre are not necessarily comedies at heart; many times, a very serious movie is classified as part of this genre because of the amount of satirical and sarcastic elements it contains (e.g., Full Metal Jacket). Satire, sarcasm, irony, fatalism, and absurdity are just a few of the elements of dark humor, but it can be difficult to determine what comprises a dark comedy when comparing a film like Full Metal Jacket to one like Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb, the latter of which is clearly a comedy. There are, in actuality, two types of dark comedy films, and Kubrick utilized both: black comedies in which comedy is the predominant genre and black comedies in which drama is the predominant genre."

Here is the link to the rest of the article.

I'm not sure what happened to the cat in this video but I think it is an example of dark humor....